Last week, we worked on figuring out our contract and what specifically we wanted to do with our podcast. We decided to focus our work on contests over different groups regarding Dowling’s memory at various sites around Houston. This week, I’m working on drafting the script for the podcast about the Dowling statue. I discovered that it is possible to view the statue from Google street maps, which will make it easy to imagine directing the viewer around the statue to view different aspects of the marker and Dowling’s life, although I also plan to visit the site again to further refresh my memory.
I think the biggest challenge with writing the podcast has been trying to figure out what exactly to include when talking about the staute. The statue can encompass a great deal of things, and I want to make sure to include all elements at the site, including the marker. Given people’s short attention spans, we’re aiming to keep all the podcasts at about 3 minutes, so that’s not too much time to give a comprehensive account of everything that’s taken place!
Based on the research I’ve done of the HPL archive and newspaper articles so far, I’m thinking I will focus on the initial construction of the statue and the groups involved in its creation in and around 1905. I will discuss the statue’s significance not just as a Civil War marker, but as Houston’s first statue. I will then use the compromises and conflicts between the UCV, Irish herritage groups and other groups involved in the statue’s creation to segway into the discussion of the marker and the statue’s rededication ceremony in 1997. If I find it’s impossible to include information about both the initial construction of the statue and the marker, then perhaps we can consider as a group making an additional podcast about the marker that discusses the 1997 ceremony in more detail.
All of this is really a long way of saying I’m still researching and thinking it through, and will have something substantial (i.e. a first draft of a podcast on the statue) posted on GoogleDocs Saturday.